Back-to-back with the THCS General Assembly, on Thursday, October 31, the event “Harnessing Digital Health: Analysing Economic Impact in Health and Care Systems” took place in Edinburgh.
This THCS shared learning event, the inaugural session of a webinar series, was organised as part of the capacity-building support activities promoted by THCS WP10, with the objective of improving the capacity of regions and countries to transform health and social care systems.
The event specifically explored various funding models for digital health and how to measure its impact at a system level. Discussions focused on the policy implications of different funding models and financial frameworks for implementing and scaling digital health technologies. These models included public-private partnerships, government funding, venture capital investments, and reimbursement policies.
The second part of the meeting focused on measuring the impact of transformation, including identifying success factors and measures necessary to achieve an equitable, trustworthy, sustainable, and scalable digital transformation.
A significant highlight was the presentation of the new WHO Europe/HIMSS Outcome Measurement Framework, developed as part of the WHO Europe and HIMSS Grand Challenge. The THCS community and broader participants had the opportunity to contribute to the framework’s development by providing input on use cases. These inputs highlighted key enablers, drivers, and barriers to digital transformation.
The outputs of this design-thinking exercise will be collected and analysed to further develop the use cases. Pilot testers will be required to test these use cases, offering additional opportunities for mutual collaboration between the THCS, WHO Europe, and HIMSS communities.